Native

What is native?

I thought about this question several times as I drove around Indiana last summer.

Native species versus invasive species. I grew up digging dock, uprooting plants. that were invasive in our fields. It was definitely considered invasive by my father. I had not thought about the plant in a long time, until I drove across Indiana on simple State roads where I could see the plants growing along fences demarcating fields. I saw burdock. It made me wonder, how long might it take for an introduced species to become invasive? Everything travels, spreads, crossbreeds, and such.

Same with people.

How do we decide what is native. How long must something exist somewhere before it is considered native? Can one become the other? The Indigenous Tribes of the Old Northwest Territory were actually in a crush zone between Iroquois, Cherokee, and Sioux with these groups expanding and controlling most of the fur trade with European powers.

After living in Arizona, having a Hopi boss, having Apache coworkers, chatting with Yaqui women, and knowing a successful artist with mixed tribal ancestry, I did not find myself thinking of contemporary Indigenous peoples living in Indiana when I returned and traveled there in 2025. A few people managed to remain individually, and at lease one small group of Miami managed to remain also. But most indigenous people were routed from their lands.

The famous individuals from these groups who were well known in the local folklore with which I grew up were Chief Little Turtle, a war chief of the Miami who was born in what is now Churubusco, as well as Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet, who was also Miami. Little Turtle’s warriors were the local tribe that peoplefelt they knew in the county in which I grew up. He and his warriors visited graphic violence on French soldiers in Whitley County and Columbia City–my city of birth. The French fought with the Americans after the French had attacked and plundered Kikianga (Fort Wayne) earning the wrath of Little Turtle’s band.

Tecumsah and his brother The Prophet , also Miami, were equally well known among the descendants of white settlers south and west of Little Turtle’s lands. These groups future was sealed in the late 1700s.

To me, even though I know better, I simply did not think of people where I grew up as Indigenous people. The State of Indiana tried to remove all the Indigenous People in the 1830s. The Potawatomi Trail of Death is the most known of these efforts to remove the last people who did not want to leave their homes. More than 800 people were forcibly removed to Kansas. At least 40 deaths occurred on the march.

Miami and Potawatami were two remaining tribes who were forcefully removed in the 1800s.

One woman with whom I went to High School, regularly attends PowWows and considers herself a lineal descendent of the Potawatomi. Chief Pokagon negotiated non-removal from Michigan for his band of people in 1830s. The Potawatomi were granted some acreage (166 acres in South Bend) in Indiana in 2016, but there is no Tribal recognition in Indiana. The Miami now only have Tribal status in Oklahoma.